I am excited to share my first interview from the Affiliate Summit West 2010! My first interview is with one of the most famous bloggers in the world and a personal favorite of mine – John Chow from JohnChow.com! John has been able to make over $40,000/month blogging and there is a lot that Domain Investors, Affiliate Marketers, and of course Bloggers can learn from his success!

I would like to give a BIG thanks to John for taking the time to be on the show! John has been a great inspiration for me and after meeting him in person I am more inspired than ever!

I have received a lot of interest in how I approach end-users over the last year. If you haven’t yet downloaded my domain sales letter you might want to grab it as it is an essential part of the process. Today I thought I would share with my readers the simple spreadsheet I use to track end-users and relevant information about my domains. Of course you’ll want to make changes to this spreadsheet to make it your own, but the general format makes it easy to stay organized when you are contacting end-users.

Generally I like to have quick access to information like Google exact match searches, Valuate.com appraisal, and CPC for the keyword phrase. It is also essential to keep track of each person you contact, when you contacted them, and if you’ve heard back. I’ve found that many Domainers will send-out emails to hundreds of end-users only to not have a record of who they contacted and when they reached-out.

Typically if I don’t hear back within a few days I’ll send a follow-up email. In many cases I will contact these companies or individuals by phone as well and if you’d like to do the same just add a “Phone Number” column to the list. The idea is that by keeping a record of your end-user contacts you can stay on top of which leads you’ve heard back from and which you need to work harder to get in contact with.

It’s always important to remember that selling a domain is just that – sales! To be a good salesperson you need to be persistent, honest, and knowledgeable. If you can prove to your customer why they need a domain, and they have the budget to buy it…why wouldn’t they?

Okay – so are you ready to start contacting end-users about your domains? Use my spreadsheet below and feel free to make any changes to it you’d like to suit your purposes. This is a very basic spreadsheet but it’s amazing how many people don’t keep a simple record of who they’ve contacted about their domains!

Download End-User Sales Tracking Spreadsheet

I don’t think a week has gone by that I haven’t received an email from one of my readers asking me how to pick which domains from their portfolio they should develop. Of course if you had infinite time the correct answer would be – all of them…but you don’t so picking the domains with the best potential to generate revenue is key.

When I first started my business in 2007 I developed the names that were the most interesting to me. I used the Warren Buffet approach of investing in what I know. It can be very easy to think that because something is of interest to you then it must be interesting to everyone else! In 2008 I developed a much more data-driven system for determining which domains I should develop. Follow the three steps below and you’ll be able to pin-point the five domains in your portfolio that have the most development potential!

1. Use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find-out how many searches the keywords in your domain gets – focus on “Phrase” and “Exact” – write down the number of searches for all of your domains
2. Now find-out the CPC for the keyword or keyword phrase in your domain, i.e. if your domain is buyshoes.com look at what the CPC is for “buy shoes”
3. Take this list and pick out your top five by taking the domains with the highest volume or searches and highest CPC

This is a method I’ve used for a while now and I can tell you – it works! Yes – there are plenty of other metrics you can look at but this is what I’ve found works the best for me. So it’s 2010 – you’ve probably made a New Year’s Resolution to develop more of your domains…but you don’t know where to start – now you do!

Have your own method for picking which domains to develop? Please comment and share!

Today I found a surprise when I looked at my Adsense account – a domain of mine, FitnessGames(dot)us had made $31.48 and that’s as of 1:45 PM – there is a whole second half of the day ahead! While this has been one of my consistent money-makers it isn’t making $30 a day…until now! So of course I’m suspicious at first (as you always should be) so went-over to Analytics to check-out where the traffic is coming from. Much to my relief I found the traffic is all coming from Yahoo search – specifically the term “fitness video games.” I went to Yahoo and typed in the search string and there I was – on the first page, third from the top! In fact I’m outranking Shop.com and PriceGrabber which means my site is now in a very valuable slot!

Just today I’ve received over 1,200 pageviews! So what happened here? Well, given that Christmas is getting closer by the day and Wii Fit is a hot product, people are looking for fitness games – and of course they’re searching online. I picked-up this domain around the time the Wii Fit came-out however it isn’t until now that the trend has literally exploded and my rankings along with it! A domain that was making me a reasonable income is now on-pace to make around $1,000 in the next month if this trend continues! Yes – it’s only day one but I have over 120 domains of which around sixty are on the first page of Yahoo or Google and the day they hit is always the beginning of something big.

Now am I just going to sit-back and collect the money? Not yet! When a domain gets to this point there are lots of little tweaks I apply to make sure I am maximizing the revenue the domain can provide. As I said I make thousands of dollars a month domaining, not tens of thousands, but every time a domain like this strikes gold I get one step closer to my goal of making five-figures a month with domains. Mark your calendars, December 14th is the day I got one step closer! This same experience has happened to me around sixty times…how many times has it happened to you? If not feel free to have my company design a site for you – we have great prices and put a big focus on SEO and Monetization so your sites will rank well and generate revenue!

On October 23rd I launched H1N1a.us – an information site about the H1N1a influenza. To be clear this is not a site filled with junk – it is an information site with actual useful information that is factually correct. All of the text on the page has been thoroughly fact-checked and I have received numerous emails from visitors thanking me for making a clear and useful website!

I just checked today and H1N1a.us is now the #1 result when you search on Yahoo for “h1n1a virus” and “h1n1a”. I’m fairly certain this just happened today as I do check these search terms fairly regularly.

This clearly shows how you can register a domain and in under two months have the site ranked in the top slot in Yahoo. My company has been doing this for two years now and I think we’re getting better with each domain we develop. With over 120 domains developed – many of which rank of the first page of Google or Yahoo for our targeted search strings I think we’re on a great course!

Last year we sold a .info site that we hand-registered for $0.99 for a few thousand dollars after getting the site to rank on the first page of Google. Obviously with these kind of rankings, strong traffic and revenue quickly follows. Since this looks like the first day for H1N1A.us it is too early to see the traffic rolling-in so I’ll report back after we have a few weeks behind us.

The key for us has always come down to one thing – CONTENT! They said it at the Affiliate Convention over and over – Content is King. We learned this early-on and great content coupled with some solid SEO techniques can really pay-off. The key is picking 3-5 keywords to target and doing your best to rank well for those keywords.

It feels good to build sites that help people find the information they are looking for and finding the hot trends is a lot of fun! We’ve got a few strong Christmas-trend domains running right now that I’m not ready to reveal yet – hey you have to keep some of the good stuff to yourself…right?

If you want to see another domain we’re getting strong traffic and revenue from – do a search on Yahoo for “stimulus check” – StimulusCheck.us is the third from the top only being outranked by the IRS themselves.

As I’ve mentioned I’m writing a book due to be out in June of 2010. This will be a real book (not an eBook) and will detail every single technique we use to get our domains ranked the way that they do. So for everyone out there developing domains hoping to strike Gold, just stick with it – patience and perseverance does pay-off!